Nike develops sports hijab for Muslim women

Nike released its plans to internationally produce athletic Hijabs for their spring 2018 clothing line. This project was announced after releasing a commercial that displayed a female professional and everyday athletes from different parts of the Arab world.

The product is supposed to be designed from fabric that is light, breathable, and resistant to pulls and tears while promising to stay tucked in during activity. The fabric is a stretchy mesh polyester and will come in three colors: black, vast grey, and obsidian. The final product is expected to cost around 35 dollars.

“The Nike Pro Hijab may have been more than a year in the making, but its impetus can be traced much further back, to an ongoing cultural shift that has seen more women than ever embracing sport,” Nike released this statement alongside the product annoucement; capitalizing on the growing group of Muslim women athletes in the Middle East.

Although different business have developed these types of clothing, Nike is the first major international company to develop and market the product worldwide. Smaller Brands, such as Capster and ResportOn, have been selling similar products since 2001, with some Muslim entrepreneurs using crowdfunding e.g. kickstarter to fund their own line of athletic Hijabs.

Nike has collaborated with several Muslim athletes to make this product, a program which took 13 months to develop. The Zahra Lari,the first figure from the United Arab Emirates to compete internationally, stated her approval of the product as a muslim athlete and a beta tester of it.

“I’ve tried so many different hijabs for performance…so few of them actually work for me. But once I put it on and took it for a spin on the ice, I was blown away by the fit and the light weight.”